Author Archives: the exile

An Air Force detail from Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. A flag-draped coffin. The family with hands over hearts as Taps mourns over the cemetery. A flag folded into a tight triangle, saluted. I know why my father joined the U.S. Air Force in 1952. Or rather, I think I know. The Korean War was at its fiercest. ... Read More »

This past week Frank Conroy, director of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, announced he would soon step down from his position. Conroy’s 1967 memoir Stop-Time is an unsentimental journey into childhood and growing up lost in America. Besides being a powerful piece of memoir, it’s beautifully written. Conroy’s style is spare, economical, no words wasted: “My father stopped living with us ... Read More »

When we read, we have to submit to the book, we have to suspend our preconceived notions. We have to learn how the book wants to be read. That’s something I discovered in my experience of a first reading of James Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime. For a long time I’ve wanted to write or read a great book ... Read More »

At first Frederick Exley’s 1968 fictional memoir, A Fan’s Notes seems as if it might read like Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. I read Exley’s sometimes excruciating novel after reading an essay on the book in Swink, a refreshing new literary magazine. By all accounts Exley’s bio sounds Miller-ish: In Swink, David L. Ulin describes Exley as “an unregenerate freeloader” ... Read More »

Last year about this time I sent a review on spec to the apparently now defunct Readerville Journal. Tom Grimes is a writer worth reading so I hope the following review will get readers interested, if they aren’t already. Review of WILL@epicqwest.com (a medicated memoir) Feeling a little “whatever”? Prozac got you up? A little too aware of the post-modern ... Read More »